Body composition calculator
Waist-to-hip ratio calculator
Divide your waist by your hips and read the result against the WHO cutoffs for abdominal obesity. Free, instant, no sign-up.
A ratio is a starting point, not a plan. The coach works from where you actually are.
What is the waist-to-hip ratio?
It is your waist circumference divided by your hip circumference, and it is the oldest of the body-shape indices still in clinical use. What it adds over BMI is location. BMI knows how much mass you carry but not where; two people at an identical BMI, one carrying it around the middle and one around the hips, are not at the same metabolic risk. Fat stored around the organs behaves differently from fat stored under the skin of the hips and thighs, and the ratio is the cheapest way to tell those two patterns apart with a tape measure.
The WHO cutoffs
The World Health Organization's 2008 expert consultation defines abdominal obesity as a ratio at or above 0.90 in men and 0.85 in women. That is one line per sex — WHO publishes no intermediate band, and the three-tier tables you will find elsewhere are not theirs. This calculator shows the WHO line and how far you are from it rather than inventing a middle category to sit in.
How to measure properly
Measure the waist at the midpoint between the bottom of the lowest rib and the top of the hip bone, not at the navel and not where a belt sits. Measure the hips at the widest point of the buttocks. Stand relaxed, breathe out normally, and keep the tape level and snug without compressing the skin. Measure at the same time of day each time — abdominal girth changes by a centimetre or more over a day with food and fluid.
Where the ratio misleads
The weakness is the denominator. Anything that shrinks your hips raises the ratio without anything having gone wrong: losing fat from the hips and thighs during a diet does it, and so does simply having a narrow pelvis. In the other direction, a lifter adding glute mass lowers the ratio while the waist is unchanged. That is why this page also shows your waist circumference on its own, against the separate WHO thresholds of 94 and 102 cm for men and 80 and 88 cm for women. When the two disagree, trust the absolute waist number and treat the ratio as context — and remember that neither is a diagnosis.